Three Years Ago Our Journey To Faith Officially Began

I promised myself this year I was not going to write about this.
I was not going to talk about this.
I was not going to cry about this.
I was not even going to think about this.

“This” meaning our Faith MaryJo. “This” meaning our loss, our struggles, our hurts, our journey, our growth.  No one cares, no one wants to keep hearing about it… about her… about us, about me. At least that's what I’ve convinced myself is the current reality anyway.

I don’t want to keep talking about her, but I absolutely don’t want to forget about her at the same time. I don’t want to bother people with my incessant yammering on and on about her life, and my life, and my struggles, and my woe-is-me’s… but I also don’t want to just ignore the reality of her short and ever-so-tiny existence. Her days were short, her physically body was tiny - but her impact, her legacy, was one of the largest life altering happenings of my life… of my immediate family's life. And to discount or ignore that… well, I just can’t quite bring myself to do that either. And the thought of somehow allowing myself to forget about her all together fills me with a soft fear that makes me want to just weep.

Which leaves me stuck in the middle… stuck in a back and forth see-saw of up and down emotions, caught up in the memories and moments of our journey three years ago… and caught up in the memories and moments of all that has happened in my life since her life and death three years ago.

Three years ago she was alive. She had a heartbeat, she had a tiny body growing within me, she had fingers and toes, arms and legs, lungs and a heart… She also had Trisomy 18, so her fingers and toes, arms and legs, lungs and heart were all formed and growing incorrectly. Her very own tiny DNA slowly killing her. Her brain was surrounded by a large pocket of fluid, her tiny heart contained an even tinier hole, her organs not forming correctly to sustain her life outside the protection of my body… a body that was fighting against her sickness and illness, causing a sickness and illness of my own to battle.

That sick little body and tiny little hole in her heart would single handedly tear open a hole in my heart bigger and larger than I’d ever experienced in life to that point, or since.

Three years ago today I was sick and I had no idea I was pregnant. Three years ago this week I would go in for an appointment to try diagnose what was causing my bleeding and my sickness. Three years ago this week I saw her little heartbeat for the very first time. Her little body moving, alive, her hands clasped together in front of her body, the whooshing and pumping of her heart clearly thumping through the machine next to the bed I laid on.

Three years ago she was alive. Three years ago her heart was still beating. Three years ago her body was still slowly growing. Three year ago her tiny body was also slowly dying. Three years ago we didn’t even know she existed… yet.

But we would. On a cold day in February we would find out there was life within me, a life we had begged and pleaded with God for for years and years. A life we had doctored for, taken so much medicine for, given so many shots for, agonized over for for years and years.

This discovery of life shocked and excited us beyond our wildest dreams, at least for a few brief moments.

But her life was not to be the life we had envisioned in all those hopes and dreams, prayers and pleadings. No, her life was not the life we had tried to order, tried to create, tried to control. Her life was the life God had chosen, and for reasons I don’t understand or want to even try decode, God chose for her life to be short, sweet, but incredibly impactful.

Her life caused so many emotions, so many reactions, so many consequences, so many changes. The joy, the excitement, the stress, the anxiety, the calamity, the devastation, the division, the reunion, the coming together of that which was falling apart, the facing of life’s reality and future reality, the coming to grips with the inner demons that lived and lined my soul with darkness and lies. Her life and her loss would, in it’s own way, be that which would actually give me some of the greatest gifts thus far in my life.

So while I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it, don’t want to cry about it… I can’t help but not, I just can’t help myself, and I’m sorry. I just can’t help but want to talk openly about her, share freely about her, and continue to tell the story of the large impact her little life left on me and my family.

Three years ago this week, our Journey To Faith would officially begin.

Click HERE to read our Journey To Faith story from the beginning.

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